Age of Wonders: Planetfall by Triumph Studios

Games
704

Like damage over time effects, e.g. Being poisoned.

Don’t quote me, but I think this was raised and dealt with.

I’m pretty sure this exists, with a Sci fi name.

There is one I got from the streams that will probably annoy me. The notification that operations are ready.

The voices of units is fine I think.

I’m not an expert but I think this is a limitation of the engine and thus can’t be gotten around.

I think they’ve kind of worked around the issue by changing the systems.

For example, in the late game, I think the design intent is that you have far fewer stacks overall compared to AoW3.

Fewer stacks means fewer clicks, means fewer incidences of simultaneous turn jamming.

It also means fewer fights, meaning the fights are more meaningful, which for me is great. I had a tendency to go for super large maps in AoW3 with max players and things bogged down towards the end.

HOWEVER, one thing it seems no one has noticed is:

Players take their turns simultaneously.

Then the independent AI takes its turn.

Then players again.

So your click priority competitors are other players, not the mass of roaming monsters.

705

They exist.

All the dungeons are themed on secret tech.

So, you might find a secret Xenoplague lab, protected by a powerful Xenoplague stack, that gets stronger* as the game goes on.

You can only send in 1 stack.

Clearing the dungeon gets you some nice rewards, including maybe some units.

If the dungeon is of your secret tech, in this case if you are Xenoplague, then absorbing the dungeon (annexing it) gets you a boost to your research.

There is also a spaceport dungeon, which gives you a boost to tactical operations points iirc.

Each of these dungeons also has substantial production, science, food etc points.

I will go screenshot hunting.

Iirc there is also a dev diary.

*I don’t know if it has been mentioned, but independent units also get mods. The frequency of this can be changed when you generate the map, as can the aggression.

That means you could set up a map where the wildlife starts with some mods, gets new mods quicker (potentially quicker than you) and is aggressive as all hell.

I’m hoping the devs develop a map template that is basically Starship troopers. Lots of bug attacks.

706

From a technical POV it can definitely be gotten around, it’s just a matter of priority. Understandable if it’s not a priority for the project, of course!

That is really interesting information about fewer stacks, players going simultaneously while AI has their separate turns, etc. I think you’re right in that will largely reduce the problem even if they don’t try to address it from a technical POV.

707

I would love if the tedium of managing a large empire – mostly getting newly produced units where they need to go – were reduced. Honestly rally points for cities and an “execute all planned moves” button would get me most of the way there.

As it is, I can’t stand anything larger than a medium map in AOW3.

708

Sorry, I’m literally quoting you, but that does indeed sound like great news. Thanks for the update!

100%, this is what I was actually thinking of when I wrote my message. I would love a separate checkbox/option to disable this particular notification voice, while leaving the other voices alone, just to have that option. Otherwise I’ll end up turning all voices off, I have a feeling.

That’s a great point, I had noticed that and then still thought it was full turn-based - I never even noticed the simultaneous pause but that is indeed how all these videos/streams have been played out, so that’s very seamless. I never once saw that priority queue cause any player to not be able to click on/do anything. Maybe making the neutrals go later is all they had to do.

Excellent. Thanks for the details! I was almost sure I read about them myself (probably in the diary you mentioned) but never saw them when viewing streams/videos. Then again most players get about 2-4 hours in and then either start a new game or didn’t stream any more.

This is awesome, and should make the mid- and late-game map clearing more engaging, for sure.

709

I suspect if you are at war with 11 AI they might win that click war and attack you before you get a chance to do anything!

By independent AI I mean the marauders. Not opposing players.

Great point.

710

Yeah, I know, that’s why I was talking about neutrals.

711

Ahh good.

Any ideas what race and class you want first?

I’m strongly inclined to Syndicate Celestian, if only because it’s seemingly an oxymoron.

712

It’s hard to say for sure since I don’t know much about the Syndicate except what we saw in the last official gameplay stream and then the Assembly is fairly unknown - I think they are sort of the Necromancer type faction, seems like? - but from what I do know I think honestly my first will probably be the Vanguard. They have a great line up of units shown, I like the way they play with unit mods and upgrades, their research tech/tree sounds like a good balance of the game’s systems, it’s probably going to be a good “first game” faction.

I do like the Dvar and Amazon factions quite a lot though, and Syndicate seems cool. The Ki’rko also seem fun, but they probably the lowest for me on the list of known factions, not for any good reason, mostly because I haven’t seen much of them since last October when they were the faction spotlight. Did anyone play them this last weekend? Seemed like everyone was Dvar, or Vanguard, with a few Amazons in the videos I found.

As for the special/secret tech I don’t really know all of them. I didn’t even know there was a “Celestian” until you mentioned it - is there a list somewhere?

713

Not as such, just fanatics like me posting information:

Celestian - Jedi, healing etc. Operates off keywords similar to AoW3 Theocrat (e.g. “devout”)

Psynumbra - Sith, break your mind. Apparently their T4 requires population, and is a beast.

Xenoplague - genetic experimentation gone wrong, virus infecting things. Apparently how this works is you research the Xenoplague unit, and then enemies you kill have a chance to spawn one of those researched units, which in turn may evolve into a higher level unit. Basically, “free” units (no energy used, no city production or time) but you have to invest into it.

Promethean - purifiers. Kill it with fire. Ostensibly created to cleanse Xenoplague infected worlds. End up cleansing whatever needs cleansing. Imho their Walkers are the coolest unit we’ve yet seen.

Voidtech - Bend the laws of time and space. Some cool looking stuff here, including battlefield black holes of some sort, and a unit that can duplicate itself, the duplicate having the same abilities (so you duplicate the unit can double grenade stuff) Seems centred on inflicting dimensional instability on enemies, which are stacking debuffs, so lvl 1 gives x weakness, lvl 2 some other weakness etc

Synthesis - the matrix/singularity, under your control. Apparently the nearest there is to a hard counter for anything, because this tech can really mess with machines (in other words, almost hard counters machine heavy units, and therefore machine heavy races like Dvar and Vanguard, but has very little bring against organics. Also, you can network your units, which is uploading them to your version of the internet, gives some buffs.

Edit: The races:

Vanguard - closest to vanilla. Flexible, don’t excel at anything, no real weaknesses. This is the Star Union military, but they’ve been in cyrosleep for 200 years.

Dvar - space Dwarves. Their scout can prospect a sector, which extracts resources (free resources!!!) The race has a strong heavy metal vibe.

Kir’ko - used to be a hive race, but the Hive Queen got lobotomised by the Star Union, because they (the Union) was looking for a hallucinogenic drug that said Queen produced. So, this race is “broken” and looking to either get revenge, or just rebuild.

Amazons - all female (not explained why) descendants of scientists isolated after the Star Union collapsed, that learned to terraform and genetically modify plants and animals, which they then ride. Think Avatar meets Predator meets MMA fighters, who use bows…

Syndicate - unfairly represented hard working Merchants who have been slandered as slavers. Indentured servitude has lots of benefits don’t you know? Think Baron/House Harkonnen from Dune.

Assembly - Cyborgs apparently. Not yet revealed officially:

image

714

Thanks for the write up, that’s some great stuff. I’d have to look through some of the options/units/mods/etc. granted by the techs to know for sure, but my gut brings me to Psynumbra or Voidtech. I think I lean to Voidtech - short range teleportation is something I love in games like this, and my favorite Magic creature type are shapeshifters so the idea of a Duplicant unit is… amazing to me.

715

Sorry, but what are the bolded items above? They aren’t races but what? Thanks.

716

I think they’re the secret tech? When you start a game you’re picking commander + faction + secret tech, mix and match as you please between faction and secret tech. Eg. Promethean-Vanguard or Voidtech-Dvar

717

Secret tech.

When you start the game you pick your race and your secret tech.

Secret because they represent banned Star Union technologies.

Edit: maybe not banned as such, but black ops type things.

Each tech has a thematically suitable doomsday victory condition, e.g. Prometheans flood the world with a gas and then ignite it.

However the game is flexible enough that you could ignore the secret tech and focus on racial tech.

You have several victory conditions, only one of which is linked to your secret tech.

718

I feel like @Scotch_Lufkin is slipping, he’s usually posting a dev diary or stream by now. Did they not have one this week?

719

Nope, it’s some sort of holiday over there. :)

They did continue last weeks stream on Monday as promised, going with the Amazon game and playing for a few hours. It’s based on the latest build of the game as well, and was a fun watch.

720

I read the first 15 or so dev diaries. I have a feeling I know what I’ll be spending some of my birthday money on because this releases 2 days after my b-day! Happy 50th to me :-)

Looks good so far. I plan to read some more dev diaries. Makes good reading for sitting quietly while I get ready to take my blood pressure.

721

Just like a perusal of P&R! ;)

722

Oh gosh, blood has come out of my ears when reading there. I lurk a lot.

723

So say we all